14 March 2012

Vancouver: Community Action Against Racism

A small group of anti-racist protesters demonstrated outside Vancouver provincial court on Monday drawing attention to a court case involving alleged members of a hate group.

Robertson Conley Trimble de Chazal, 25, and Alastair Michaelson Miller, 20, had their next court dates set for March 19 and April 2, respectively.

Both face assault charges for an alleged incident in which a Filipino man was set on fire as he lay on an abandoned couch in September 2009.

An anti-racism group has identified de Chazal and Miller as members of the international white supremacist group Blood and Honour.

"We would like this group to be dissolved," protester Krystle Alarcon told the Vancouver Province.

"We would like (de Chazal and Miller) to be convicted for assaulting people of colour in Vancouver, and we would like to see racism in general stop," said Alarcon, a member of the Philippine Women's Centre.

"We see that assault (of the Filipino man on the couch) as a racist act."

Alarcon said she was disappointed that it has taken three years for the men's case to get this far. No trial date has been set.

The Indigenous Action Movement supported Alarcon's group at the protest.

Const. Terry Wilson of the B.C. Hate Crime Team declined to comment on the case, saying he is expecting to be called as a witness.

Last December, Wilson said his team had disrupted Blood and Honour.

"Through the course of these investigations, we've been disruptive in that organization and its membership has dwindled," Wilson told reporters at a news conference called to draw attention to racist groups operating in B.C.

2 comments:

Interesting... seems like he may have grown up and left that stuff behind him. For that new band it says in the Facebook page description "Anti racism, sexism, homphobia, capitalism. Pro art, expression, diversity, contrast."

Also just looking at pictures he seems to have moved on from the whole black metal style and mindset and looks generally more like a hipster rocker guy. The band itself is not black metal either. Not saying black metal is somehow a cause of being a racist scumbag but there are strong associations there (for instance Varg Vikernes is essentially their hero and founder and he is an avowed Neo-nazi not to mention murderer) and it suggests he left his old life behind if he has shed those aspects of his personality.

He is being very careful about his identity though. He is only ever referred to as Lester in all the band info and reviews and such. Not uncommon for musicians to take on stage names, especially in metal, but obviously he has a much stronger motivation given that if you google his name, the first results will all be about him burning a guy sleeping on a couch.

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At age 16, Elisa Hategan was an alienated runaway who became recruited into Canada's most powerful white supremacist movement, the Heritage Front. She was groomed by top leaders to become a rising star of the extremist far-right movement. An errand girl for notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, she was a witness to the illicit activities of an undercover CSIS agent and co-founder of the Heritage Front. At age 18, she turned against the group and spied on them for several months before testifying in court and going into hiding.